The other day, I went on a tour of Fair Oaks Farms, a large dairy complex about 45 miles from me in Indiana. Fair Oaks is a popular tourist destination. It has been inviting the public in to look at its operation since 2005. Catering to day-trippers, it features all sorts of family-friendly exhibits, a bus tour, a gift shop/cafeteria, etc.
I incidentally belong to a local watchdog group concerned with the welfare of farm animals. This group tries to mitigate the worst practices of "factory farms." So when I went to Fair Oaks, I was prepared to take notes to report back to F.A.C.T. about conditions there. Since the dairy opens itself to the public though, I presumed I would not be seeing any atrocities committed against the cows there.
And indeed, the farm did look humane. The cows weren't "free range." I'm told that sort of freedom is virtually non-existent in the world of dairy farming, especially since the bacterial dangers of cattle associating on grazing land have been brought home to everyone. However the cows were "free-stall." That is, they were not tethered to small, assigned stalls. They were free to move around within the long barns where they were housed. Each cow could choose its own sand bed, get up and go to the water trough, visit neighbors, etc. This was OK - but still, there were a lot of cows in each barn and there wasn't much room for them to move or socialize. But the cows did look generally clean and content, although rather thin, with hipbones showing. (The tour moderator explained that most of the cows' weight went into their udders and milk production. They weren't genetically prone to accumulating beef fat around their haunches.)
Our tour guide pointed out all the effort that had gone into making the farm “green.” By-products were recycled. For example, the cows’ manure went to make fertilizer. The methane produced by the cows’ digestive process was used as fuel to produce the electricity that ran significant portions of the operation.
We wore 3-D glasses to watch an instructional film showing an overview of the whole corn-to-cow-to café au lait process. Well, “instructional film” might not be quite the word for this video that we were all herded in to watch in the theater of the main building. That phrase harkens back to the black-and-white talking heads films that served school children of the 1950’s as visual aids. This film was another animal altogether. It was more of an MTV-style video featuring a barrage of special effects and quick cuts.
In addition to its moderators being teenagers giving Bill Nye Science Guy-style goofy, gushy blurbs about each step of the operation – there was Sensorama connected to the pictures. Each member of the audience felt the warm breezes that fanned the cows in their free-stall barns. Each member of the audience got a squirt in the face when old-fashioned manual milking technique was demonstrated, by way of contrast with the farm’s modern, automated milking go-rounds. An udder was pointed at us, and – spritz! We all got a spray of what I presume was water in our faces. Then again as grand finale, the animated cow on screen turned its back to us, and looking mischievously over its shoulder, let loose with a spritz from its hinder orifice. Again, I presume it was water that sprinkled us from the rafters in synchrony with this rascally scatology. To keep with the cow-herd-udder theme, I might say that titters in the audience swoll into general guffawing hilarity as the cow lined up on us a second time. Would it let loose again? Suspense - squeals of anticipation – watch out!
As we trooped out, returning our 3-D glasses to a bin, we were a jostling, merry bunch. The picture presented had been one of such jolly benignity. Then I went into the birthing barn. It was here that I felt the undertow of tragedy to this whole operation.
The dairy had two straw-covered birthing rooms with glass fronts, so the viewing public could get a good look at calves being born. (Everything on view was behind glass throughout the complex. The visiting public was never allowed to interact with or step close to any animal - again for fear of contamination. ) The dual compartment birthing room was "a clean, well-lighted place,” to use Hemingway’s foreshadowing title.
One Holstein had just given birth when I arrived. She was licking off her calf. After about 10 minutes, the calf could already stand, although feebly. An attendant came in and gave the calf colostrum from a milk bottle, then ushered it out of the room - partly leading it, then loading it into a wheelbarrow and carting it the rest of the way to its individual large doghouse-like room retreat in calf-quarters. I wondered why the calf hadn’t been allowed to suckle from its mother.
Another Holstein in the other section of the birthing room finally sprawled to give birth lying down. Two legs emerged from her birth canal, and then things seemed to stop. After about 20 minutes, that same attendant donned up-to-her-biceps-length plastic gloves, reached in, and helped ease the calf forward in the birth canal. (It was like an illustration of what James Herriot had described so often in his books about being a veterinarian in the Yorkshire Dales in the 1930’s.)
After receiving that helping hand, the calf soon popped completely out of the birth canal. It was a bit smaller, more beleaguered-looking than the other calf I had just seen. At first we all thought it was dead. It just lay in the hay, a somewhat sweaty, bloody heap. But then in a few seconds, it stirred, then raised its head, then tried to struggle to its feet. It was alive! We all cheered.
Its mother started to lick it. Another Holstein who’d been led into the adjoining stall still in the early, standing stages of her labor - stuck her head between the railings separating the compounds, and started to help lick the newborn. The two females made a friendly communal project of the baby.
Having now seen the whole cycle of birth, from early contractions through to successful baby in the manger, many of us started to leave, to go back to the gift shop and our buses. We were all happy that things did indeed seem to be so cheerful and humane throughout.
But I stopped a moment to talk further to the attendant. I asked when that first calf would be brought back to its mother to suckle. The attendant said, "Oh, never. They will never see each other again."
I gasped and looked over at the other calf, a little male, still being licked by its mother and the other cow.
"That one too?"
The calf doula nodded. "Yes, that one will also get taken away in a few minutes. Since it's a male, it will probably be sold in a week - for veal.”
"But isn't that separation psychologically difficult for mother and child?" I asked plaintively.
“No, it’s not tough on the animals - not really. That’s the way it is,” she said. “The calf doesn't know any better - and the mothers are used to it. They just know - they give birth - and the baby is taken. They're used to it," she repeated.
Her words were meant to be reassuring. But I saw her eyes mist over, and then an actual tear rolled down her cheek. That little male she had just helped bring into the world was destined to have a very short life indeed. She had apparently failed to convince even herself with her repeated reassurance that the animals “didn’t mind.”
For all the clean hay and fresh water and bright, cheery lights - this was a business, geared to meet our huge, indifferent demands for more milk, more meat, more everything. Like most production in this atmosphere, it necessarily had to be mass-production. Keep things moving - efficiency – assembly line - a factory after all.
